The Perfect Life Lie

Have you ever noticed that everyone else’s life is perfect? It doesn’t matter if you are looking at their beautifully

edited life on Facebook or Intsagram; their perfectly spotless house at your scheduled play date; or listening to the stories they tell at the weekly mommy and me group, the picture you see is perfect. I don’t know about your real life, but my real life doesn’t look like that. As I was trying to think of who I could talk to, about a particularly difficult child raising moment, I realized that moms need a place where we can be ourselves. We need a place where we can talk about the messy parts of life. The hard parts. The downright scary parts. That’s why I started a different kind of Spokane mommy group..

Our child-friendly office holds the, Stressed Out Mom Meet Up, every week, along with an online Facebook group. In these places, life isn’t edited. We talk about our babies that are still waking up every 2 hours at 9 months old. Moms vent about how hard it is to be a single mom/live with our husbands, a working mom/stay at home mom, mom of babies/mom of teens, breastfeeding mom/bottle feeding mom, mom of tantruming toddlers/mom of sassy teens. Its discussed when our houses are messy. We talk about forgetting about important appointments or getting our kids to school late… again. We aren’t afraid to mention looking through the dirty laundry pile for the cleanest dirty shirt.

The Rules

I have created this Spokane mommy group to unload mom guilt. In this space, it’s ok to talk about the mistakes we have made. Asking advice when we don’t know what to do, is encouraged. None of us have this parenting thing figured out. Put it out there when you feel like you’re sinking. We have all been there. How else can we support each other if we don’t know what we need. Because its important to me that we foster a community where we feel safe talking about this things, I have had to establish a few rules.

• We will do nothing to make a mom feel more guilty.
• Receive each other with empathy and support.
• Keep all of our discussions respectful.
• We realize that there are different parenting styles and be respectful of that.
• No spam or advertising is allowed.
• We will not share any information from the group outside the group.
• This is a safe space, and we’re here to help each other out. I have to let you know that by law, if you say that you’re planning to hurt yourself, or someone else, I’m mandated to report that information.

The Take-Away

Mom guilt is a real thing. So many of us think we are screwing up our kids. We spend time thinking about all the things we do wrong, while seeing other people’s picture perfect lives on social media. I have actually been accused of being the mom with my shit together. The truth is, the purpose of pictures, is to remember the perfect moments. What we don’t realize is, we are all making mistakes, because nobody talks about them. We are afraid to ask for help, because we don’t want to be judged. We feel guilty, because we don’t realize just how normal we are.

So if you are looking for a Spokane mommy group where you don’t have to edit out the tough stuff, we welcome you! Come to our next group. Get comfy on our couches and unload. See you soon.